Summary - Think great beer only comes in bottles? Not anymore, as craft brewers embrace the packaging they say delivers a fresher and better-tasting product

First there was the microbrewing revolution. Now comes what we might call the microcanning revolution.

Canned craft beer? You scoff, but think about it: You've likely never had great beer out of a can because so far, not much great beer has been put into a can. That's changing, and fast. Thanks to microcanning equipment developed in Canada, small brewers are discovering that canning good beer makes perfect sense for them and their customers.

A quirk of Canadian laws allowed residents of two provinces to brew their own beer at brew-on-premise shops, thereby avoiding provincial and federal beer taxes. But customers still had to scrub dozens of empty bottles, or worse, put their beer up in clear plastic soda jugs, and Cask Brewing Systems of Calgary, Alberta, saw a market for a small, affordable canning line.

The brew-on-premises market has since waned, but craft brewers stand ready to take up the slack and then some, because here's a way to can beer for a reasonable price. Instead of processing thousands of cans a minute like existing industrial systems, these rigs crank out as many as 1,800 cans an hour and cost $10,000 to $50,000 U.S. instead of millions, so even brewers who can't afford teams of telegenic Clydesdales can swing a small canning line.

Which is why we're about to find out that everything we know about canned beer is wrong.

Oskar Blues Brewery was the first microbrewery to buy canning equipment from the Canadians. The small Colorado brewpub now sells two styles of canned beer here: Dale's Pale Ale, a big, hoppy pale ale; and Old Chub, a rich, malty Scottish-style ale. They should be on the shelves of your favorite bottle shop now.

Caldera Brewing in Ashland just bought microcanning equipment and is putting the finishing touches on the package design and recipe of Caldera Pale Ale. CPA should be available in Southern Oregon in March, although we'll likely have to wait until summer before it hits our shelves.

And for a couple of years, Portland Brewing has canned MacTarnahan's Amber and Mac's Highlander Pale Ale, which are sold seasonally to specialty markets such as marinas, golf courses and Alaska Airlines. They're now brewed and canned in New Ulm, Minn., at the historic August Schell Brewing Co. (which is blessed with a modern canning line and Alan Kornhauser, Portland Brewing's former brewmaster) so they aren't exactly part of the microcanning revolution, but they are fine examples of good beer in a can.

None of this may be especially exciting news if all you've ever poured from cans are Silver Bullets and straw-gold fizz. But there's no reason why big beers can't live and thrive in cans, said Oskar Blues founder Dale Katechis. Ratebeer.com bears him out: Oskar Blue's Old Chub is the top-rated Scottish ale on that Web site, and Dale's Pale Ale is the No. 8 American pale ale.

"Cans eliminate light damage," he said, "and they hold far less oxygen than bottles. So our beers stay fresher longer -- plus cans are less fuel-consuming to ship and recycle and they make it possible to enjoy great beer outdoors."

Light damage and oxidation are two enemies of packaged beer. According to Beeradvocate.com, ultraviolet light destroys hop-derived molecules called isohumulones, and creates sulfur compounds -- the reason that light-struck beer is called skunky.

Brown bottles offer much more protection than green or clear glass, but beer can become light-struck in minutes in bright sunlight -- and in time even under artificial light -- so you'll understand why Katechis makes such a point of saying that his beers have never seen sunlight.

Oxidation is caused by air trapped during packaging. It creates a stale, wet cardboard flavor in the beer. Although air trapped in a can could actually oxidize beer more quickly than in a bottle because of the greater contact area, modern canning systems purge air with a blast of carbon dioxide or nitrogen before the can is filled and the lid crimped on. In recent tests of Dale's Pale Ale, the levels of dissolved oxygen were too low to be accurately measured by the test being used.

Jim Mills of Caldera Brewing is impressed with the difference between even mass-market beers in bottles and cans. "Taste a Heineken from a bottle and then from a can," he said. "The malt and hops are so much more present in the canned beer. When a friend first tried canned Heineken against bottled, he said, 'Whoa! That's not Heineken -- but I like it.' "

So why isn't this paragon of packaging more prevalent? Why is good canned beer still newsworthy?

The can's stigma is widespread enough that when Katechis first got a fax from Cask Brewing Systems touting its canning equipment, he treated it like any other junk fax. "We laughed, because we had a cult following for our very aggressive beers, and we never saw ourselves as canning them. We kept talking about it and laughing and then one day I stopped laughing and thought, 'Hey, why not cans?' "

It was an excellent question: The bump in sales from canned beer has nearly quadrupled production during the last two years, to about 93,000 gallons of beer, and there are current backorders for about 8,000 cases of beer.

But there were a couple of barriers, said Katechis. Cask Brewing Systems eliminated the first of those with its small, affordable systems and by contracting with Ball of Canada for smaller lots of affordable cans.

"The second problem is the perception of consumers," said Katechis, "the belief that cans must contain pusillanimous, watered-down beer because they always have. But the consumer perception issue just got us excited."

"Originally, we thought we'd brew for special markets where bottles aren't feasible -- rafting, marinas, golf courses and marinas. Then we thought, 'Hey, we don't want to be just the boat beer. We want to be competitive with any premium beer.' "

Which is why they've come to Oregon and Washington. Oregon beer consumers are among the most knowledgeable anywhere, Katechis said. "We knew if we convince you guys that good beer can come from a can, we'd have it made. If you guys sign on, other markets will follow."